Friday, August 10, 2012

Then, on the Seventh Day

Most of what I had written in the first seven days of WFMD Challenge were not words that would see the light of day. I was writing for the sake of writing.

But something happened on the evening of the seventh day. 

I had already written that day, but in the late afternoon, I decided to open a file that I had been avoiding. It was the current chapter in my YA novel, a chapter that had been giving me fits. Like any good procrastinator, I just chose not to look at it. 

I am not sure what the initial spark was for wanting to return to this chapter, but I know it was not guilt, it was not a sense of duty. It was something closer to curiosity: I wanted to see what I had done and what I could do. (Ignoring it deliberately does have its merits. It allowed me to read what I'd written with a more objective perspective.) As I read the rough words, I started writing and editing. While I wouldn't describe the process as having the heavens open up, I was able to work and push forward instead of fighting with the stop-and-start-and-stutter phenomenon that had passed itself as the process of writing in recent times. 

 
 So it is true. Write consistently: drivel, rubbish, cliches, doesn't matter. The habit will make it easier for the real writing to take place. 

4 comments:

Cheryl Reif said...

Yay for forward progress! So glad to hear you're moving forward again, and glad to hear that I will see you at this year's SCBWI conference!

tanita✿davis said...

And God saw that it was very, very good.

Go, you.

Yat-Yee said...

Awww. Tanita.

Cheryl: I'm looking forward to the conference. I'm so glad to find out the date of mss has been extended to the 14th. You'll be getting something from me!

Bish Denham said...

Yup, writing anything is better than writing nothing at all.